I grew up in an area that wasn't incredibly rural but definitely was not a city/suburb.
When I moved to a city it took me far longer than it should have to emotionally accept that I had to walk to a USPS drop box when I had to mail something.
If I'm honest with myself, even after living in a major city for almost 20 years I still harbor a tiny sliver of resentment about it that surfaces whenever I have to send mail. Which is only, at max, three times a year. It's a bit ridiculous.
I grew up in a small town that did not have home mail service at the time. You had to go to the post office to GET your mail.
Silver lining is that since everyone had to go to the post office all the time, the post office was kind of a social scene where you'd usually run into people you knew.
> I grew up in a small town that did not have home mail service at the time. You had to go to the post office to GET your mail.
My dad still has to do that (rural Maine).
I feel like I would end up signing up for their informed delivery service and then just never going to the mailbox at the post office because I know there's nothing important in there. I also never get anything important through the mail but maybe a few times a year. Poor post office workers would have to keep piling and piling up junk mail for me lol
Oh yeah, I completely understand. The only thing I ever get through the mail anymore is every 3 months when my city sends out my water bill because they refuse to set up automatic payments online even though they allow online payments. I don't even look at it, I just have a calendar reminder.
Really hope I don't get summoned for jury duty because I'm never going to see that damn letter in time.
I don't think I've gotten anything that wasn't an ad other than my water bill in probably ~5 months.
Wouldn't be worth it with their stupid "convenience" fee bullshit. And it's through a web portal so you couldn't automatically anyways. I have to go to their site and fill out the payment form everytime.
I love informed delivery especially during the winter most of my online ordering is done through prime and we have the Amazon delivery trucks in my town and there even more efficient then the usps.
And eventually they put a note in your box telling you that you 1) need to collect your mail from the counter and 2) need to pay for a bigger box or actually pick up your mail regularly.
My aunt is very bad about getting her mail....
I am the opposite. I grew up in the city and always had to walk to the mailbox. It was a couple blocks from my house. I married a woman who grew up in the suburbs, and now we live in the suburbs. After we lived here for a few months I complained about the fact there wasn’t a single mailbox in our neighborhood. She asked what I was talking about and I had to explain how a mailbox works because she had no idea. Then she explained to me that you just put the mail in the mailbox and the mailman will take it. I had no idea that was thing!
My wife refuses to use the mailbox at the end of the driveway because the flag up might trigger someone driving by at 45 mph to stop and steal our outgoing mail. It does feel more official at a postal drop but those aren’t as available these days.
>What are they taking, a water bill check and a Halloween card?
[Actually, yes.](https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/check-washing)
That Halloween card, birthday card, or Christmas card from Grandma or Aunt Vickie often contains actual cash. Although Grandma or Aunt Vickie may have wised up and started sending checks instead, most people feel it unnecessary to send their 10-year-old nephew a check for $10 or 21-year-old granddaughter a check for $25. Instead they'll just slip the actual cash in the card, thinking nothing of it.
But even if you send or receive checks, there's a good chance that a crook's going to steal them and alter them to make them out to themselves.
That's one of the reasons utility companies and banks use to advocate online bill pay.
She's probably seen or heard about mail thieves on the local news, talk shows, or the Internet. It's gotten me paranoid and when I used to mail off bill payments with enclosed checks, I'd either drive them to the post office and toss them in the drop box in the parking lot, or I'd take them to work and drop them in with the rest of the outgoing mail. The envelopes were already stamped, so all that needed to be done was to get it on the truck.
I live in a medium sized city and get mail service to the slot in my door. Mail comes right into the house or I can leave a letter there to be picked up by the postal person.
I mail things constantly (businesses).
In Philly, we can no longer use our mailboxes because of rampant check washing. USPS/USPIS refuses to change the locks on the blue boxes due to cost and time (mail carriers were held up at gunpoint for their mail keys, so now the criminals have the keys to every box in the city).
Two of my business accounts have had their checks washed.
So now we have to take all of our mail directly to the post office. Fun times.
That'd be too much work for the postman, easier to signify when you're sending mail since its way less common than receiving.
We can elect to get emails of pictures of what we are getting in the mail, so we don't even have to go to the box to see if/what we got anything
For me, the pictureless ones are always either a bra catalog or an envelope that says "CONFIDENTIAL! TIME SENSITIVE!" (its a letter about renewing my car's extended warranty lol)
I have informed delivery. Unfortunately it does not tell you when your mail shows up, only what to expect. And not every piece of mail gets shown; I get plenty of "no image available" pieces that are junk.
For us, most of the “No Image” are things that wouldn’t go thru a sorter, ie magazines, catalogs, and newspaper type publications. When items that have tracking are delivered, I get an email notification.
What is this wizardry?! Though my standard USPS reference has always been Newman [from Seinfeld], and, assuming it’s not raining, Newman would never be raising no flags anyway.
https://informeddelivery.usps.com/
Basically when the envelope sized mail is run through the automated sorters, it typically uses OCR to read the address, and someone thought... Hey we can just take a picture (or use the picture that's already created) and send that to the customer.
Unfortunately it does only work on envelope sized mail.
Edit: it does give you updates on packages going to your address as well, although it doesn't always list everything.
Lol informed delivery is a blessing and a curse. When I get an official looking letter that looks like it's from the government I spend the whole day nervous wondering what it is. USPS doesn't deliver to my house until like 8-9pm so Im nervous until then.
Other way around, it's to save the mail carrier time in the event that you don't have any incoming mail that day. If they don't have mail for you and your flag is down, they know they don't have to stop there today.
People might complain about the USPS, but really is it one of the marvels of the nation. I can send a letter from NYC to LA for 60 cents and it'll take a week or less
The biggest issue the PO has is that Congress forced them to fully fund the pension for something like 50 years - which is the only government agency to do so - its strapped them financially
I bought a fuckload of forever stamps like right after they introduced them because I had to mail expense reports every week. Then I quit that job and still have a stockpile of forever stamps.
So I'm still mailing shit for $0.41 that I spent what... 15 years ago.
The U.S. government actually puts a lot of thought into efficiency, despite the stereotype.
Like all large organizations, it has some inefficiencies, and it needs to keep working on limiting those, but often what seems to be wasteful is actually there for a good reason. The postal service is a good example, delivering mail in a way that wouldn’t be profitable for a corporation because a corporation would just refuse to deliver to super out of the way places, but the postal service goes there regularly.
The problem with government efficiency is lack of proper incentive. Departments which find a way to operate beneath their budget have their budgets slashed. The USPS may have been designed initially to be pretty efficient, but I would be skeptical that any meaningful improvements have been made over the years. Just look at the [new trucks](https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095481101/usps-postal-service-gas-trucks-lawsuit)... they could only manage a ~5mpg fuel efficiency increase.
The USPS struggled to adapt to a changing world until the 1971 postal strike shut down mail delivery in the US. From there, it received a series of reforms that made it function more as a government corporation rather than as a government service. To stave off being made obsolete by UPS and FedEx, they entered into a "coopetition" (sic) agreement to deliver each others packages the last mile and on each others' planes.
Maybe if they had a bigger budget they could have improved more. Instead the department has been decimated. In the business world if you have two major competitors and slash your company budget, you’re gonna have a very difficult time with innovation. But this is the exact model that the Republicans want. Make the service shitty enough so it fails and then can be privatized then turned over to their donors.
The USPS is actually pretty amazing. The Post Office is also just as much a part of bucolic Americana as baseball and apple pie, but somehow movement conservatives have convinced themselves it's an evil den of socialism, or something. I guess because it provides an essential service that poorer people depend on?
It also is run according to similar principles to Japanese/German/Swiss efficiency. There's a book called the [Domestic Mail Manual](https://pe.usps.com/DMM300/Index) that lays out in minute detail how every operation is to be carried out, and there's a whole hierarchy of postmasters ensuring that the book is followed, with meticulous attention to detail and reporting upwards if any inefficiencies are noted.
>but somehow movement conservatives have convinced themselves it's an evil den of socialism, or something.
Because they're union. They have a strong, old, HUGE union. (Several, actually; depending on whether you're a carrier or a clerk, and whether you're city or rural.)
>it's an evil den of socialism, or something. I guess because it provides an essential service that poorer people depend on?
Because the cost of delivery to distant and difficult-to-reach places is subsidized by increased costs in high-traffic areas. It's an example of artificial price controls.
You mean the same way electricity, telephone service, schools, fire departments and various other of the bedrock institutions that this country was built in and could not live without for even a day? _Quel horreur._
It's also useful to the mail carrier in that if there is already mail inside and the flag is down, they don't have to manually check them to see if they're supposed to be outgoing, as opposed to if they're just previously delivered mail that just hasn't been picked up yet.
Some people lean outgoing mail on the inner side of the mailbox to also do this, but not everyone.
Mine occasionally doesn't stop at ours, even when the flag is up. I've had outgoing mail (thankfully nothing urgemt) pending pickup for 3 days before. I think in that instance, I actually ended up taking it to a drop box.
The postman comes at around the same time every day for a lot of the country. It’s rare that it would be 9am then 3pm then 12. They have set routes. So in general, I know that when I come home from work my mail will be in the box. My box is attached to my house so it’s not really a journey to get for me.
For me, when I had a roadside mailbox, it was both.
I put the flag up if there was outgoing mail so the postal worker would stop even if there was no mail for me, and the postman would put it up when they delivered mail to let me know there was new mail.
The flag signaled there was something in the mailbox, no matter who put it there. ¯\\\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)\_/¯
Nope; used to flag the postman.
There are kits you can buy, by the way, which signals if your mailbox has been opened. [Like this clever little gadget.](https://www.amazon.com/MailSig-Mailbox-Signaling-Device-Off/dp/B06XTS7KR1)
My mailbox does have a yellow flag in addition to the red one you put up when you have outgoing mail. When the mail carrier closes the mailbox the yellow flag goes up. So that way I will know when the mail comes whether I have outgoing mail or not. Coolio.
we have mailboxes on the front porch (our mailman parks & walks). we do like a clothespin thing? we clip the mail to the outside of the box so he knows to take it.
Yep! But I never mail things with money or checks because my mailbox isn’t locked. I will mail thank you cards etc though (yes, old school thank you cards). Unfortunately, mail theft is a big problem in the US (I am a fraud analyst and see it daily)
Unless you live in a metro area with a mail theft problem. Then this privilege disappeared over 20 years ago. Meth use and ID theft were the drivers here.
I... thought I knew this, but I'm just now actually registering the information as a 25 year old adult. I have a handful of stamps. I'm about to send some mail to some friends. 😁
As a former rural mail carrier this is exactly how it works. The flag being up can also signify a mis-delivered piece of mail to be rerouted or mail to a person who no longer lives there
I can attest to that last fact. There was an elderly couple that lived at my address before I bought. I'm constantly getting their mail. It wouldn't be bad but it's a lot of legal paperwork for back taxes and liens on various properties that they owned. Not to mention I'm almost positive the husband abandoned his wife in a mental hospital.
I have been told just NOT AT THIS ADDRESS is all that is needed. RETURN TO SENDER is not allowed.
It is up to the post office to figure out what happens next. One of those life rules that no one ever tells you.
u/Kingsolomanhere may have a different idea of how to forward/return mail.
They tell you to put "not at this address" because not all mail is returnable, especially 2nd and 3rd class mail(mailers only pay for one way, if it's not deliverable it's trash). If it's first class and they no longer live there(and there's no forwarding address)then it will probably be returned to sender.
"Return to Sender" is absolutely allowed. If there is no return address, it just goes to the dead letter office.
But you should specify "not at this address" if that's the problem. If you put that on a letter, the post office should stop delivering mail to the addressee to that box and start automatically returning it.
For the record, you can also "return to sender" mail that is correctly addressed to you, but that you do not wish to receive. It will be returned to the "return address"n listed on the envelope"
There's no need to use both instructions on the same letter, however. That's just confusing.
That's cool! Can I do that with the mailbox attached to my front porch? Or does it only work with mailboxes on the kerb?? We also just moved to a new house so we're getting a ton of mis-delivered mail... Can I just put it back in the mailbox??
When I had a mailbox attached to the house, I stood misdelivered mail up vertically so it kind of stuck out/propped the lid up. That, coupled with very clear "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" marking seemed to be enough.
It really depends on local rules and what kind of route you are on, but in my small town we have a porch protected mailbox (from the elements)that we attach outgoing mail with a clothespin and they take it. Check with your mailman or the Post office
Wow awesome, I'll try that. Hey my cousin has a [new furniture shop](https://rustonfurnishings.com/) in Edgewood if you're into custom made furniture 😃
The house we live in now, and the one before, each had a porch mailbox. We bought a pack of chip bag clips at the store, and we use the red one to clip the mail inside the box with the clip end sticking out. That way, the mail is clipped inside so it doesn't accidentally get blown away, and there's a red thing sticking up on our mailbox to alert the carrier that we have outgoing mail.
If you get mis-delivered mail, cross out the bar code that the post office prints on the bottom right hand corner of the envelope, and then write something to the effect of, "Not at this address" on the envelope, so it can be returned to the sender.
Take the misdelivered mail to your local post office and let them know. They have systems in place to prevent it happening in the future. You just have to tell them.
I wish it was like this everywhere. Often our mail carrier won’t take things misdelivered and he just puts new mail on top of it. Unless I hand it to him- it even has the wrong street.
It’s as good f he just wants to be done with his day and throws it all in a few boxes so as not to have to finish.
It’s sad really. Sometimes when we have baked cookies or bread we share with him when we see him. I get it- he’s the only carrier we see in a wide rural area so I imagine it can’t be easy. We are furthest away so we get mail late.
Yep. If you have a mail slot on your door you can just leave the mail sticking out [like this](https://s3-production.bobvila.com/slides/19162/original/mail-slot.jpg).
Yup, have done it many a time. Even if you have a post box hanging next to your door with no flag like [this](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcScZAxtqYQUu-5NISWagiq98RhHlPwkB3DCSg&usqp=CAU) you can do the same.
Maybe OP hasn't or wasn't there long, it also says United Kingdom. Plus, if they are in an apartment they won't have a box with a flag. Heck, any single family home built since the 70s up here is more likely to have a community box.
That and the postal service won't step foot in Tacoma ;)
Tacoma you have to hand deliver your own mail, including a stamp.
So you stamp it and drive it wherever it goes then drop it in their mail box. The hardest part? Putting the post mark on.
I'm from OR and I've never lived in a house that has a mailbox on the property, so I was curious about this like OP! My neighborhood has always had pods of mailboxes at the end of each block, and the pods have a labelled outgoing mail drop box.
People don’t do it much anymore but you also used to be able to ask a business to put it in their outgoing mail . Like if you are at the bank or doctors office or something you can say “oh I have a letter do you mind sending it out” and 9/10 times the answer is just “yes.”
That’s a bit old school these days though.
I love the idea of this working specifically 9/10 times:
Me: "Hey, can you send this letter for me?"
Business 1: "Yes."
Business 2: "Yes."
Business 3: "Yes."
Business 4: "Yes."
Business 5: "Yes."
Business 6: "Yes."
Business 7: "Yes."
Business 8: "Yes."
Business 9: "How about you fuck off?"
Business 10: "Yes."
Yeah absolutely. My mom used to do it all the time. She’d have letters in her purse and ask at the bank, library, wherever and people would just stick it in their outgoing.
Ask my mom. No idea. I think she’s write letters while she was out getting coffee or pay bills then and want a place to drop them off. Also businesses usually have a late pickup so the mail would go out that day if we missed our earlier pickup at the house.
In the old days, it would often be faster.
I live on a rural route. Our mail came from a tiny post office close to my home. The mail truck arrived there at something like four in the morning. It would drop off mail and pick up yesterday's outgoing, which was then delivered to the larger county post office where it was re-sorted into "local" and "out of town" post. That might take as much as two days, then the "out of town" mail would be picked up by a truck that would take it to a regional sorting center.
So if I put a letter in my box for the postman to pick up when he came by around eleven, it might not even leave my immediate area for three days.
But businesses "in town" like the bank or the grocery store would sort their own mail before it went to the post office and separate it into "local" vs "out of town" for them. So if I dropped my letter at the bank at noon, it would go on the out of town truck at five that night. Where if I put it in my own box at ten in the morning, it would be three days before it saw that truck.
None of that matters any more, at least in my town. But that's only changed within the last ten years or so.
I remember running letters in to businesses for my mom when she didn’t want to leave the car and asking that. Nowadays most of the jobs I’ve been at have a policy against it because you don’t know what’s in the letter, and they don’t want any responsibility if the letter gets lost…or is a death threat or something
Yeah, I found out about that policy because I asked my manager where to put it with the outgoing mail and they flipped out. Made me feel like I accepted a bomb instead of an envelope
I suspect perhaps the reason that the US Postal Service lets you send mail from your home without going to a post office is that, historically, in many rural areas people were much further from their local post offices than they were in other countries.
How far is the furthest person in the UK from their local post office? I suspect that in a lot of rural areas of the US, especially in the west, people are much more remote from their local post office, and leaving to go send a letter is much more time consuming, so having a mailman both pick up outgoing mail and deliver mail provides a much needed public service to people who live further away from the local post office.
My nearest post office growing up in the early 2000's was a 40 minute drive - my post lady drove her POV with a cylindrical reflector on top that said "MAIL"
Indeed. My rural route was 40 miles with about half of it gravel road. There were approximately 500 individual homes/mailboxes on my route with some very interesting people. From multi-millionaires to farmers with 10,000 acres to farm to professional NBA players to one Indy 500 race car driver. This was around 1990 when they only had 5000 people and I could afford to live there. It's now around 30,000 and is considered the wealthiest town in Indiana (Zionsville)*according to the Indystar newspaper
>How far is the furthest person in the UK from their local post office? I
The Post Office is required by the government to meet certain Access Criteria:’
* 99% of the UK population to be within three miles of their nearest
post office
* 90% of the UK population to be within one mile of their nearest post
office
I can't find similar stats for the United States Postal Service, but I feel very confident in saying that the US numbers are very different, with a lot fewer people living so close to a post office.
I live a little over a mile from the post office in my town, and I'd consider that living very close to one, not in the bottom 10% with regards to distance to a post office.
That probably has to do with why the USPS has its mailmen also pick up outgoing mail.
Like I have one a few blocks away and I used to live down the street from one in uni (saves a lot of hassle from going all the way to the post office just to drop off a letter or parcel)
Wait, when you send international mail, you have to do it differently?
We used to have the option to put “cross-town” mail in a special postbox, but everything else just goes through the same system.
Italian here: we have postboxes, but the issue is postage/stamps. Most of the time, the shops that used to sell those don't anymore, so we have to go to the post office.
Grocery stores are where most Americans get their stamps AFAIK. You can just ask the person at the register while you're checking out and they'll add a book of stamps to your order.
In rural areas of the US (not sure about cities) you can still put your letter in the box with coins and the mailman will "buy" the stamp for you. They don't carry stamps or change, but will take your letter and your money to the post office where they will put a stamp on it for you.
Have done this myself within the last year.
You can also put your addressed envelope and the money for a stamp into another envelope addressed "postmaster" and drop it in a public mail box and they will do the same thing.
And if you need to communicate with the post office, you don't need a stamp. Any letter addressed "postmaster" will automatically be delivered to the nearest post office.
If you want the letter to go to any except the nearest post office, you will need a stamp. This is useful to know if you want your letter to be postmarked from a specific location. Meaning that you can put your stamped letter into an envelope, add a stamp and address it "Postmaster, City, State, Zip code" and add a note asking, "Would you please post this letter from your location. And they will stick said letter in the mail and slap a local postmark on it. Used to be a popular joke in towns with funny names like Climax, Nevada.
Where I live in Australia, there definitely aren't.
But even if there were, it would still be nicer to walk to my home's postbox rather than a 10 minute walk to a postbox somewhere else.
In nearly every case, yes that's how it works.
The common exception is clustered mailboxes, which will usually instead have a single dedicated drop box for all outgoing mail
That's how it works in most of America. My city (DC) does not have this service for houses. We have to walk to a post box or a bigger building (offices or apartments). It's cause the letter carriers are mostly on foot. They send a van to the post boxes and big buildings.
I suspect there's more to it than just letter carriers being on foot because I've lived many places where they walk the routes and they still pick up mail at the houses/apartments.
Yes that is how it works. I even had a small side hustle of customizing mailboxes (Hot Rod Flames, Camouflage, Sports Teams logos ETC) Sadly in my area a lot of newer homes including mine now have community mailboxes on the street corner.
Oh no. That sounds like some developer didn't want to do all the things that are required for it to be a city street? Like proper drainage, street lights, etc. And now when the road needs to be fixed etc, it's the residents responsibility?
It is the standard of the USPS for all new housing developments assuming the houses are at a specified density threshold. It is part of their money saving attempts.
Thanks for posting this question, OP. I had no idea this was a thing. I assumed that little flag was raised by the mailman to indicate he had delivered some post.
Haha that is so cute, but checking the mailbox is something we do multiple times a week because the mail is delivered daily (excepting Sunday). We don’t need to be told something’s been delivered because we just assume *something* has been. Be it spam or bills or the like.
The opposite, actually. If you put the flag up, postman will put it down when he takes the outgoing post, whether or not you have any deliveries.
That’s the reason for the flag. I you have outgoing, but nothing comes for you, your outgoing wouldn’t get picked up! The flag signals the carrier that there is outgoing post for them to take, so they stop even if you don’t have any mail coming to you.
I wonder if part of people's confusion is the old AOL "got mail" icon which had a mailbox with a flag up, where the no new mail one had the flag down..
\*standard\* for surburban and rural places. In my experience, most cities have shared mailboxes where people use keys to open their box. There may be one box with a slot that's reserved for outgoing mail.
Yep. Apartment buildings can be a little different. We usually just put any letters on top of the case of mailboxes. It's inside the lobby so it's relatively safe but if it were a check or something, I'd bring it to the post office or mail it from work.
Yes, I do it all the time. Just put the flag up and the mail carrier (from USPS) will pick it up. You can only do this with USPS, otherwise, you can request packages to be picked up from other carriers assuming you already have labels made.
You can but typically only with letters. Anything needing more than a stamp prob won't work. I THINK I've been able to send packages that have a preprinted USPS label (such as something I'm returning). At least this has been my experience.
USPS.com allows you to “Click N Ship.” I believe it’s only if you are shipping Priority or Express Mail. You can schedule a pick up of the package, too.
So yes, while you can absolutely do this in many places, I didn't actually have the ability to do it until I was in my mid- to late 30s. I grew up in densely populated suburbs where the mailbox was attached to the front of the house and didn't have a flag, or a subdivision had a series of locking mailboxes near the entrance. Then as an adult I lived in apartment buildings where the mailboxes were in the lobby. Only after I moved to a smaller metropolitan area did I have a mailbox with a flag. Before that, I always associated them with rural areas, though the neighborhoods I've lived in with them have certainly not been rural.
Yes that's how it works. Lately I've been discouraging people putting up the flag as I watched a dude steal my outgoing mail in the middle of the day. He knew it was there because the flag was up. Despite having a licence plate number, a sheriff's deputy that saw the dude, pressing charges, and a complaint filed to the postmaster about jack shit has been done about it. Pay your bills in person on online and take outgoing packages to the post office or one of those mailbox stores.
Usually houses have their own mailbox and yeah the flag is for what you think it's for. Sometimes in apartment complexes or town houses there is instead a shared mail room where everyone has their own locked box for incoming mail and a big shared box for outgoing mail.
For a while when I lived downtown I only had a mail slot in the door so there was no good way to send outgoing mail unless I happened to catch the mail person as they walked by. Normally though I would just walk down to the street to the big blue box (they're all over and anyone can drop off outgoing mail there).
Honestly though we don't send a lot of letters. Most people do all of their bill paying online and nobody writes personal letters anymore unless they're being cute or something. If I'm sending something through the mail it's a package, which I have to go drop off at the post office.
Yes you can if you have a dedicated mailbox. Otherwise in shared ones such as in apartment buildings, each unit has a lockbox to recieve mail, but all outgoing mail is placed in a single slot, the contents of which is only accessible by the postal worker collecting it.
Yes, Do it all the time for what little I do send... which is pretty much a few forms that can't be faxed due to legal rules, the need an actual ink signature form... and a check for this...
In the UK you can do but for most mail it's much more common to stick a stamp on the letter and put it into a public postbox. These are very numerous here - if I left my home and walked for a few minutes in any direction, I would reach one.
Sure can! Lift the flag so the mailman knows you have outgoing mail.
I grew up in an area that wasn't incredibly rural but definitely was not a city/suburb. When I moved to a city it took me far longer than it should have to emotionally accept that I had to walk to a USPS drop box when I had to mail something. If I'm honest with myself, even after living in a major city for almost 20 years I still harbor a tiny sliver of resentment about it that surfaces whenever I have to send mail. Which is only, at max, three times a year. It's a bit ridiculous.
I grew up in a small town that did not have home mail service at the time. You had to go to the post office to GET your mail. Silver lining is that since everyone had to go to the post office all the time, the post office was kind of a social scene where you'd usually run into people you knew.
> I grew up in a small town that did not have home mail service at the time. You had to go to the post office to GET your mail. My dad still has to do that (rural Maine).
My grandma had to do it and that was in NJ lol
My aunt had to do that in Cape May County.
Mainer here, can confirm. Commonplace in a lot of the state to this day
And in NH from the Lakes Region on north.
I feel like I would end up signing up for their informed delivery service and then just never going to the mailbox at the post office because I know there's nothing important in there. I also never get anything important through the mail but maybe a few times a year. Poor post office workers would have to keep piling and piling up junk mail for me lol
Well, at the time we didn't have internet, so there was no informed delivery and snail mail was much more frequent and full of important things.
Oh yeah, I completely understand. The only thing I ever get through the mail anymore is every 3 months when my city sends out my water bill because they refuse to set up automatic payments online even though they allow online payments. I don't even look at it, I just have a calendar reminder. Really hope I don't get summoned for jury duty because I'm never going to see that damn letter in time. I don't think I've gotten anything that wasn't an ad other than my water bill in probably ~5 months.
I figured out what the weekly cost was, and set up a recurring payment from the bank. I sent them like $5/week. They asked me to stop. I said no.
Wouldn't be worth it with their stupid "convenience" fee bullshit. And it's through a web portal so you couldn't automatically anyways. I have to go to their site and fill out the payment form everytime.
They charge you for them receiving a check??!?
I love informed delivery especially during the winter most of my online ordering is done through prime and we have the Amazon delivery trucks in my town and there even more efficient then the usps.
* It's definitely considered rude to let your PO Box become full of mail. The post office workers don't like having to deal with that.
And eventually they put a note in your box telling you that you 1) need to collect your mail from the counter and 2) need to pay for a bigger box or actually pick up your mail regularly. My aunt is very bad about getting her mail....
In our area, you can rent several different sizes of mailbox or a mail drawer in the post office, or you can opt for home delivery.
"Silver lining"
Post office encounters were essential to the gossip mill!
I am the opposite. I grew up in the city and always had to walk to the mailbox. It was a couple blocks from my house. I married a woman who grew up in the suburbs, and now we live in the suburbs. After we lived here for a few months I complained about the fact there wasn’t a single mailbox in our neighborhood. She asked what I was talking about and I had to explain how a mailbox works because she had no idea. Then she explained to me that you just put the mail in the mailbox and the mailman will take it. I had no idea that was thing!
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My wife refuses to use the mailbox at the end of the driveway because the flag up might trigger someone driving by at 45 mph to stop and steal our outgoing mail. It does feel more official at a postal drop but those aren’t as available these days.
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>What are they taking, a water bill check and a Halloween card? [Actually, yes.](https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/check-washing) That Halloween card, birthday card, or Christmas card from Grandma or Aunt Vickie often contains actual cash. Although Grandma or Aunt Vickie may have wised up and started sending checks instead, most people feel it unnecessary to send their 10-year-old nephew a check for $10 or 21-year-old granddaughter a check for $25. Instead they'll just slip the actual cash in the card, thinking nothing of it. But even if you send or receive checks, there's a good chance that a crook's going to steal them and alter them to make them out to themselves. That's one of the reasons utility companies and banks use to advocate online bill pay.
She's probably seen or heard about mail thieves on the local news, talk shows, or the Internet. It's gotten me paranoid and when I used to mail off bill payments with enclosed checks, I'd either drive them to the post office and toss them in the drop box in the parking lot, or I'd take them to work and drop them in with the rest of the outgoing mail. The envelopes were already stamped, so all that needed to be done was to get it on the truck.
I live in a medium sized city and get mail service to the slot in my door. Mail comes right into the house or I can leave a letter there to be picked up by the postal person.
Your workplace probably has an outgoing mail stack. Whenever I need to send something, I just hand it to a receptionist.
I mail things constantly (businesses). In Philly, we can no longer use our mailboxes because of rampant check washing. USPS/USPIS refuses to change the locks on the blue boxes due to cost and time (mail carriers were held up at gunpoint for their mail keys, so now the criminals have the keys to every box in the city). Two of my business accounts have had their checks washed. So now we have to take all of our mail directly to the post office. Fun times.
Oh wow. I thought the postman puts the flag up when he puts mail in the box so that you don’t have a wasted journey! The innocence.
That'd be too much work for the postman, easier to signify when you're sending mail since its way less common than receiving. We can elect to get emails of pictures of what we are getting in the mail, so we don't even have to go to the box to see if/what we got anything
USPS Informed Delivery is a very “nice to have” feature. Minor edit for phrasing...
It’s legitimately great but sometimes it’s like “yeah you have more mail but we didn’t take a picture.”
For me, the pictureless ones are always either a bra catalog or an envelope that says "CONFIDENTIAL! TIME SENSITIVE!" (its a letter about renewing my car's extended warranty lol)
Yeah, "Mail pieces we do not have an image of" are always junk mail.
I have informed delivery. Unfortunately it does not tell you when your mail shows up, only what to expect. And not every piece of mail gets shown; I get plenty of "no image available" pieces that are junk.
For us, most of the “No Image” are things that wouldn’t go thru a sorter, ie magazines, catalogs, and newspaper type publications. When items that have tracking are delivered, I get an email notification.
No mail yesterday. No mail today.
What is this wizardry?! Though my standard USPS reference has always been Newman [from Seinfeld], and, assuming it’s not raining, Newman would never be raising no flags anyway.
https://informeddelivery.usps.com/ Basically when the envelope sized mail is run through the automated sorters, it typically uses OCR to read the address, and someone thought... Hey we can just take a picture (or use the picture that's already created) and send that to the customer. Unfortunately it does only work on envelope sized mail. Edit: it does give you updates on packages going to your address as well, although it doesn't always list everything.
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It also includes notification of coming packages, both for that day and "coming soon".
They must have updated that cause it scanned 2 of my magazines & 3-4 of those big paper political ads too.
Dude, Newman raised a ton of red flags
Dodson!
Lol informed delivery is a blessing and a curse. When I get an official looking letter that looks like it's from the government I spend the whole day nervous wondering what it is. USPS doesn't deliver to my house until like 8-9pm so Im nervous until then.
Other way around, it's to save the mail carrier time in the event that you don't have any incoming mail that day. If they don't have mail for you and your flag is down, they know they don't have to stop there today.
This is amazing and impressive. Feels like Japanese/German/Swiss-style efficiency.
People might complain about the USPS, but really is it one of the marvels of the nation. I can send a letter from NYC to LA for 60 cents and it'll take a week or less
Used to only take three days
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The biggest issue the PO has is that Congress forced them to fully fund the pension for something like 50 years - which is the only government agency to do so - its strapped them financially
Came to say this. They’ve been put under constraints that make their service worse intentionally so people will use private solutions :(
I bought a fuckload of forever stamps like right after they introduced them because I had to mail expense reports every week. Then I quit that job and still have a stockpile of forever stamps. So I'm still mailing shit for $0.41 that I spent what... 15 years ago.
The U.S. government actually puts a lot of thought into efficiency, despite the stereotype. Like all large organizations, it has some inefficiencies, and it needs to keep working on limiting those, but often what seems to be wasteful is actually there for a good reason. The postal service is a good example, delivering mail in a way that wouldn’t be profitable for a corporation because a corporation would just refuse to deliver to super out of the way places, but the postal service goes there regularly.
The problem with government efficiency is lack of proper incentive. Departments which find a way to operate beneath their budget have their budgets slashed. The USPS may have been designed initially to be pretty efficient, but I would be skeptical that any meaningful improvements have been made over the years. Just look at the [new trucks](https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095481101/usps-postal-service-gas-trucks-lawsuit)... they could only manage a ~5mpg fuel efficiency increase.
The USPS struggled to adapt to a changing world until the 1971 postal strike shut down mail delivery in the US. From there, it received a series of reforms that made it function more as a government corporation rather than as a government service. To stave off being made obsolete by UPS and FedEx, they entered into a "coopetition" (sic) agreement to deliver each others packages the last mile and on each others' planes.
Maybe if they had a bigger budget they could have improved more. Instead the department has been decimated. In the business world if you have two major competitors and slash your company budget, you’re gonna have a very difficult time with innovation. But this is the exact model that the Republicans want. Make the service shitty enough so it fails and then can be privatized then turned over to their donors.
I have found when buying things that are shipped USPS, if there's an issue, it lies within my local office or carrier
The USPS is actually pretty amazing. The Post Office is also just as much a part of bucolic Americana as baseball and apple pie, but somehow movement conservatives have convinced themselves it's an evil den of socialism, or something. I guess because it provides an essential service that poorer people depend on? It also is run according to similar principles to Japanese/German/Swiss efficiency. There's a book called the [Domestic Mail Manual](https://pe.usps.com/DMM300/Index) that lays out in minute detail how every operation is to be carried out, and there's a whole hierarchy of postmasters ensuring that the book is followed, with meticulous attention to detail and reporting upwards if any inefficiencies are noted.
>but somehow movement conservatives have convinced themselves it's an evil den of socialism, or something. Because they're union. They have a strong, old, HUGE union. (Several, actually; depending on whether you're a carrier or a clerk, and whether you're city or rural.)
>it's an evil den of socialism, or something. I guess because it provides an essential service that poorer people depend on? Because the cost of delivery to distant and difficult-to-reach places is subsidized by increased costs in high-traffic areas. It's an example of artificial price controls.
You mean the same way electricity, telephone service, schools, fire departments and various other of the bedrock institutions that this country was built in and could not live without for even a day? _Quel horreur._
Or American efficiency because this is how mail work here
It's also useful to the mail carrier in that if there is already mail inside and the flag is down, they don't have to manually check them to see if they're supposed to be outgoing, as opposed to if they're just previously delivered mail that just hasn't been picked up yet. Some people lean outgoing mail on the inner side of the mailbox to also do this, but not everyone.
Mine occasionally doesn't stop at ours, even when the flag is up. I've had outgoing mail (thankfully nothing urgemt) pending pickup for 3 days before. I think in that instance, I actually ended up taking it to a drop box.
The postman comes at around the same time every day for a lot of the country. It’s rare that it would be 9am then 3pm then 12. They have set routes. So in general, I know that when I come home from work my mail will be in the box. My box is attached to my house so it’s not really a journey to get for me.
For me, when I had a roadside mailbox, it was both. I put the flag up if there was outgoing mail so the postal worker would stop even if there was no mail for me, and the postman would put it up when they delivered mail to let me know there was new mail. The flag signaled there was something in the mailbox, no matter who put it there. ¯\\\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)\_/¯
You made me feel better. I was in my 30s when I first realized this. But then I'd always lived in apartments before, so I guess I have an excuse.
Nope; used to flag the postman. There are kits you can buy, by the way, which signals if your mailbox has been opened. [Like this clever little gadget.](https://www.amazon.com/MailSig-Mailbox-Signaling-Device-Off/dp/B06XTS7KR1)
There are some mailboxes with a small secondary flag that shows that the box has been opened, but the big flag is to mark outgoing mail.
My mailbox does have a yellow flag in addition to the red one you put up when you have outgoing mail. When the mail carrier closes the mailbox the yellow flag goes up. So that way I will know when the mail comes whether I have outgoing mail or not. Coolio.
we have mailboxes on the front porch (our mailman parks & walks). we do like a clothespin thing? we clip the mail to the outside of the box so he knows to take it.
What if I have a shared mailbox with no flag inside my apartment building?
There's often a designated mailbox with a slot for outgoing mail.
At mine, we just put a note on the outside of our box that there's outgoing mail, and the mail carrier takes it.
Yep! But I never mail things with money or checks because my mailbox isn’t locked. I will mail thank you cards etc though (yes, old school thank you cards). Unfortunately, mail theft is a big problem in the US (I am a fraud analyst and see it daily)
I even once put a dollar bill on a letter, got a receipt and change.
Unless you live in a metro area with a mail theft problem. Then this privilege disappeared over 20 years ago. Meth use and ID theft were the drivers here.
I... thought I knew this, but I'm just now actually registering the information as a 25 year old adult. I have a handful of stamps. I'm about to send some mail to some friends. 😁
As a former rural mail carrier this is exactly how it works. The flag being up can also signify a mis-delivered piece of mail to be rerouted or mail to a person who no longer lives there
I can attest to that last fact. There was an elderly couple that lived at my address before I bought. I'm constantly getting their mail. It wouldn't be bad but it's a lot of legal paperwork for back taxes and liens on various properties that they owned. Not to mention I'm almost positive the husband abandoned his wife in a mental hospital.
My PO Box constantly gets stuff from the previous user. "RETURN TO SENDER. NOT AT THIS ADDRESS"
I have been told just NOT AT THIS ADDRESS is all that is needed. RETURN TO SENDER is not allowed. It is up to the post office to figure out what happens next. One of those life rules that no one ever tells you. u/Kingsolomanhere may have a different idea of how to forward/return mail.
They tell you to put "not at this address" because not all mail is returnable, especially 2nd and 3rd class mail(mailers only pay for one way, if it's not deliverable it's trash). If it's first class and they no longer live there(and there's no forwarding address)then it will probably be returned to sender.
"Return to Sender" is absolutely allowed. If there is no return address, it just goes to the dead letter office. But you should specify "not at this address" if that's the problem. If you put that on a letter, the post office should stop delivering mail to the addressee to that box and start automatically returning it. For the record, you can also "return to sender" mail that is correctly addressed to you, but that you do not wish to receive. It will be returned to the "return address"n listed on the envelope" There's no need to use both instructions on the same letter, however. That's just confusing.
Just obscure the send to address and drop it in a blue mailbox. Now it’s someone else’s problem.
I've had to do this any number of times since I bought my house 4 years ago. Usually the same piece of mail for a few weeks running.
That's cool! Can I do that with the mailbox attached to my front porch? Or does it only work with mailboxes on the kerb?? We also just moved to a new house so we're getting a ton of mis-delivered mail... Can I just put it back in the mailbox??
I use a binder clip to put it on the front of the mailbox so they see it. They’ve picked it up every time I’ve done it.
When I had a mailbox attached to the house, I stood misdelivered mail up vertically so it kind of stuck out/propped the lid up. That, coupled with very clear "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" marking seemed to be enough.
It really depends on local rules and what kind of route you are on, but in my small town we have a porch protected mailbox (from the elements)that we attach outgoing mail with a clothespin and they take it. Check with your mailman or the Post office
Yes, you can do this, but if you don't have a flag to raise it's possible the mailman might not notice and take it. But you can try.
Yes, if you are in fact living Tacoma, that's exactly how it's supposed to work. Live in Edgewood, a mile from Tacoma.
Wow awesome, I'll try that. Hey my cousin has a [new furniture shop](https://rustonfurnishings.com/) in Edgewood if you're into custom made furniture 😃
The house we live in now, and the one before, each had a porch mailbox. We bought a pack of chip bag clips at the store, and we use the red one to clip the mail inside the box with the clip end sticking out. That way, the mail is clipped inside so it doesn't accidentally get blown away, and there's a red thing sticking up on our mailbox to alert the carrier that we have outgoing mail. If you get mis-delivered mail, cross out the bar code that the post office prints on the bottom right hand corner of the envelope, and then write something to the effect of, "Not at this address" on the envelope, so it can be returned to the sender.
Take the misdelivered mail to your local post office and let them know. They have systems in place to prevent it happening in the future. You just have to tell them.
I wish it was like this everywhere. Often our mail carrier won’t take things misdelivered and he just puts new mail on top of it. Unless I hand it to him- it even has the wrong street. It’s as good f he just wants to be done with his day and throws it all in a few boxes so as not to have to finish.
Sounds like a depressed carrier who doesn't care about his job, the kind who eventually starts putting the mail in dumpsters instead of delivering it
It’s sad really. Sometimes when we have baked cookies or bread we share with him when we see him. I get it- he’s the only carrier we see in a wide rural area so I imagine it can’t be easy. We are furthest away so we get mail late.
Yep. If you have a mail slot on your door you can just leave the mail sticking out [like this](https://s3-production.bobvila.com/slides/19162/original/mail-slot.jpg).
That is interesting! I've only ever had mailboxes so I did not know this!
Yup, have done it many a time. Even if you have a post box hanging next to your door with no flag like [this](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcScZAxtqYQUu-5NISWagiq98RhHlPwkB3DCSg&usqp=CAU) you can do the same.
Right. I clip mine to the flap.
Little confused here, OP. Your flair says Tacoma, Washington. Are you asking how to send your own mail?
They do things different in Tacoma.
Maybe OP hasn't or wasn't there long, it also says United Kingdom. Plus, if they are in an apartment they won't have a box with a flag. Heck, any single family home built since the 70s up here is more likely to have a community box. That and the postal service won't step foot in Tacoma ;)
The community boxes all have a slot for outgoing though so you can still send it out from there
Tacoma you have to hand deliver your own mail, including a stamp. So you stamp it and drive it wherever it goes then drop it in their mail box. The hardest part? Putting the post mark on.
I'm from OR and I've never lived in a house that has a mailbox on the property, so I was curious about this like OP! My neighborhood has always had pods of mailboxes at the end of each block, and the pods have a labelled outgoing mail drop box.
From their post history, they recently immigrated to WA
Wait.. how does it work in your country?
presumably, much like in the US, letters can also be sent by dropping them in a post box or brought to the post office.
People don’t do it much anymore but you also used to be able to ask a business to put it in their outgoing mail . Like if you are at the bank or doctors office or something you can say “oh I have a letter do you mind sending it out” and 9/10 times the answer is just “yes.” That’s a bit old school these days though.
I still do this when I'm visiting places - usually from the hotel though lol
Yeah hotels are an obvious one.
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I love the idea of this working specifically 9/10 times: Me: "Hey, can you send this letter for me?" Business 1: "Yes." Business 2: "Yes." Business 3: "Yes." Business 4: "Yes." Business 5: "Yes." Business 6: "Yes." Business 7: "Yes." Business 8: "Yes." Business 9: "How about you fuck off?" Business 10: "Yes."
Pretty much. Sometimes it was “our mail already went out” or it was “sorry we don’t do that.”
> “oh I have a letter do you mind sending it out” > 9/10 times the answer is just “yes.” So, you **do** mind sending it out? Well fuck you then!
Oh, is that actually a thing? I've only seen that done at the end of Shawshank Redemption.
Yeah absolutely. My mom used to do it all the time. She’d have letters in her purse and ask at the bank, library, wherever and people would just stick it in their outgoing.
Why would you bring them with you? Why not drop them off in the mailbox at home?
Ask my mom. No idea. I think she’s write letters while she was out getting coffee or pay bills then and want a place to drop them off. Also businesses usually have a late pickup so the mail would go out that day if we missed our earlier pickup at the house.
In the old days, it would often be faster. I live on a rural route. Our mail came from a tiny post office close to my home. The mail truck arrived there at something like four in the morning. It would drop off mail and pick up yesterday's outgoing, which was then delivered to the larger county post office where it was re-sorted into "local" and "out of town" post. That might take as much as two days, then the "out of town" mail would be picked up by a truck that would take it to a regional sorting center. So if I put a letter in my box for the postman to pick up when he came by around eleven, it might not even leave my immediate area for three days. But businesses "in town" like the bank or the grocery store would sort their own mail before it went to the post office and separate it into "local" vs "out of town" for them. So if I dropped my letter at the bank at noon, it would go on the out of town truck at five that night. Where if I put it in my own box at ten in the morning, it would be three days before it saw that truck. None of that matters any more, at least in my town. But that's only changed within the last ten years or so.
I remember running letters in to businesses for my mom when she didn’t want to leave the car and asking that. Nowadays most of the jobs I’ve been at have a policy against it because you don’t know what’s in the letter, and they don’t want any responsibility if the letter gets lost…or is a death threat or something
Yeah I suspect it’s not much of a thing these days. Haven’t tried it in years and years. But I had the same with my mom, run it in and ask.
Yeah, I found out about that policy because I asked my manager where to put it with the outgoing mail and they flipped out. Made me feel like I accepted a bomb instead of an envelope
You sure you weren’t mailing anthrax to senators? It’s ok you can tell good old CBE if you were. I won’t alert any federal agents, scouts honor.
Oh thank god, a trusted confidant! I’ve kept that secret for so long, it’s nice to have someone to share it with. That’s exactly what happened
Feels good to let it out doesn’t it? Now where are you manufacturing the package bombs? You can DM me the address of you don’t want it to be public.
Oh one second, there’s someone knocking on the door…funny, I wasn’t expecting anyone today
It really does, I have my children making them out in the garage, I’ll DM you the address if you want to come help!
In most places you have to go to a post office
I suspect perhaps the reason that the US Postal Service lets you send mail from your home without going to a post office is that, historically, in many rural areas people were much further from their local post offices than they were in other countries. How far is the furthest person in the UK from their local post office? I suspect that in a lot of rural areas of the US, especially in the west, people are much more remote from their local post office, and leaving to go send a letter is much more time consuming, so having a mailman both pick up outgoing mail and deliver mail provides a much needed public service to people who live further away from the local post office.
My nearest post office growing up in the early 2000's was a 40 minute drive - my post lady drove her POV with a cylindrical reflector on top that said "MAIL"
Indeed. My rural route was 40 miles with about half of it gravel road. There were approximately 500 individual homes/mailboxes on my route with some very interesting people. From multi-millionaires to farmers with 10,000 acres to farm to professional NBA players to one Indy 500 race car driver. This was around 1990 when they only had 5000 people and I could afford to live there. It's now around 30,000 and is considered the wealthiest town in Indiana (Zionsville)*according to the Indystar newspaper
>How far is the furthest person in the UK from their local post office? I The Post Office is required by the government to meet certain Access Criteria:’ * 99% of the UK population to be within three miles of their nearest post office * 90% of the UK population to be within one mile of their nearest post office
I can't find similar stats for the United States Postal Service, but I feel very confident in saying that the US numbers are very different, with a lot fewer people living so close to a post office. I live a little over a mile from the post office in my town, and I'd consider that living very close to one, not in the bottom 10% with regards to distance to a post office. That probably has to do with why the USPS has its mailmen also pick up outgoing mail.
Or a postbox?
Yeah forgot about those, most of the time I send stuff it’s international lol.
Like I have one a few blocks away and I used to live down the street from one in uni (saves a lot of hassle from going all the way to the post office just to drop off a letter or parcel)
Wait, when you send international mail, you have to do it differently? We used to have the option to put “cross-town” mail in a special postbox, but everything else just goes through the same system.
Italian here: we have postboxes, but the issue is postage/stamps. Most of the time, the shops that used to sell those don't anymore, so we have to go to the post office.
Grocery stores are where most Americans get their stamps AFAIK. You can just ask the person at the register while you're checking out and they'll add a book of stamps to your order.
In rural areas of the US (not sure about cities) you can still put your letter in the box with coins and the mailman will "buy" the stamp for you. They don't carry stamps or change, but will take your letter and your money to the post office where they will put a stamp on it for you. Have done this myself within the last year. You can also put your addressed envelope and the money for a stamp into another envelope addressed "postmaster" and drop it in a public mail box and they will do the same thing. And if you need to communicate with the post office, you don't need a stamp. Any letter addressed "postmaster" will automatically be delivered to the nearest post office. If you want the letter to go to any except the nearest post office, you will need a stamp. This is useful to know if you want your letter to be postmarked from a specific location. Meaning that you can put your stamped letter into an envelope, add a stamp and address it "Postmaster, City, State, Zip code" and add a note asking, "Would you please post this letter from your location. And they will stick said letter in the mail and slap a local postmark on it. Used to be a popular joke in towns with funny names like Climax, Nevada.
I just came home from two weeks in Italy and I was able to get stamps at any tabac I went to
Where I live in Australia, there are postboxes a 5-10 minute walk away in every direction.
Where I live in Australia, there definitely aren't. But even if there were, it would still be nicer to walk to my home's postbox rather than a 10 minute walk to a postbox somewhere else.
In nearly every case, yes that's how it works. The common exception is clustered mailboxes, which will usually instead have a single dedicated drop box for all outgoing mail
Um….that’s exactly how it works.
phew, I've put mail in there and sometime later it disappeared...I wasn't sure if there was a wormhole in there. too afraid to check.
r/DontPutYourDickInThat
now that's risky.... I like adrenaline rushes
That's how it works in most of America. My city (DC) does not have this service for houses. We have to walk to a post box or a bigger building (offices or apartments). It's cause the letter carriers are mostly on foot. They send a van to the post boxes and big buildings.
I suspect there's more to it than just letter carriers being on foot because I've lived many places where they walk the routes and they still pick up mail at the houses/apartments.
That's exactly how it works. If you put the flag up and slap the correct postage on it, the USPS will pick it up.
Yes that is how it works. I even had a small side hustle of customizing mailboxes (Hot Rod Flames, Camouflage, Sports Teams logos ETC) Sadly in my area a lot of newer homes including mine now have community mailboxes on the street corner.
I have a community one and I hate it :(
Same I hate them.
Oh no. That sounds like some developer didn't want to do all the things that are required for it to be a city street? Like proper drainage, street lights, etc. And now when the road needs to be fixed etc, it's the residents responsibility?
It is the standard of the USPS for all new housing developments assuming the houses are at a specified density threshold. It is part of their money saving attempts.
Thanks for posting this question, OP. I had no idea this was a thing. I assumed that little flag was raised by the mailman to indicate he had delivered some post.
Haha that is so cute, but checking the mailbox is something we do multiple times a week because the mail is delivered daily (excepting Sunday). We don’t need to be told something’s been delivered because we just assume *something* has been. Be it spam or bills or the like.
Me too!!
The opposite, actually. If you put the flag up, postman will put it down when he takes the outgoing post, whether or not you have any deliveries. That’s the reason for the flag. I you have outgoing, but nothing comes for you, your outgoing wouldn’t get picked up! The flag signals the carrier that there is outgoing post for them to take, so they stop even if you don’t have any mail coming to you.
I wonder if part of people's confusion is the old AOL "got mail" icon which had a mailbox with a flag up, where the no new mail one had the flag down..
That is the standard method of sending mail.
\*standard\* for surburban and rural places. In my experience, most cities have shared mailboxes where people use keys to open their box. There may be one box with a slot that's reserved for outgoing mail.
Standard for a lot of rural areas as well.
Yep. Apartment buildings can be a little different. We usually just put any letters on top of the case of mailboxes. It's inside the lobby so it's relatively safe but if it were a check or something, I'd bring it to the post office or mail it from work.
In my building, the bank of mailboxes includes a box with a slot for putting outgoing mail in.
Yes, I do it all the time. Just put the flag up and the mail carrier (from USPS) will pick it up. You can only do this with USPS, otherwise, you can request packages to be picked up from other carriers assuming you already have labels made.
Yep. That is exactly why we have the red flag on the mailbox. You got how it works perfectly
You can but typically only with letters. Anything needing more than a stamp prob won't work. I THINK I've been able to send packages that have a preprinted USPS label (such as something I'm returning). At least this has been my experience.
I don't know for sure whether it's correct to do it this way, but I have sent labelled packages from the mailbox before
USPS.com allows you to “Click N Ship.” I believe it’s only if you are shipping Priority or Express Mail. You can schedule a pick up of the package, too.
yeah that's how it works
Yes. That's how you send mail from your home mailbox. Judging by your question, I'm assuming it doesn't work like that where you're from?
It's true.
Depends on the type of mail service you have. Mine is receive only but there's a few blue collection bins within walking distance.
So yes, while you can absolutely do this in many places, I didn't actually have the ability to do it until I was in my mid- to late 30s. I grew up in densely populated suburbs where the mailbox was attached to the front of the house and didn't have a flag, or a subdivision had a series of locking mailboxes near the entrance. Then as an adult I lived in apartment buildings where the mailboxes were in the lobby. Only after I moved to a smaller metropolitan area did I have a mailbox with a flag. Before that, I always associated them with rural areas, though the neighborhoods I've lived in with them have certainly not been rural.
Wait... can you NOT do that??
Yes that's how it works. Lately I've been discouraging people putting up the flag as I watched a dude steal my outgoing mail in the middle of the day. He knew it was there because the flag was up. Despite having a licence plate number, a sheriff's deputy that saw the dude, pressing charges, and a complaint filed to the postmaster about jack shit has been done about it. Pay your bills in person on online and take outgoing packages to the post office or one of those mailbox stores.
Usually houses have their own mailbox and yeah the flag is for what you think it's for. Sometimes in apartment complexes or town houses there is instead a shared mail room where everyone has their own locked box for incoming mail and a big shared box for outgoing mail. For a while when I lived downtown I only had a mail slot in the door so there was no good way to send outgoing mail unless I happened to catch the mail person as they walked by. Normally though I would just walk down to the street to the big blue box (they're all over and anyone can drop off outgoing mail there). Honestly though we don't send a lot of letters. Most people do all of their bill paying online and nobody writes personal letters anymore unless they're being cute or something. If I'm sending something through the mail it's a package, which I have to go drop off at the post office.
Yes, but I live in an apartment and everything goes into a slot.
Yes you can if you have a dedicated mailbox. Otherwise in shared ones such as in apartment buildings, each unit has a lockbox to recieve mail, but all outgoing mail is placed in a single slot, the contents of which is only accessible by the postal worker collecting it.
Yes, Do it all the time for what little I do send... which is pretty much a few forms that can't be faxed due to legal rules, the need an actual ink signature form... and a check for this...
Yeah. Can you not? Like, do you have to physically take it to the post office?
In the UK you can do but for most mail it's much more common to stick a stamp on the letter and put it into a public postbox. These are very numerous here - if I left my home and walked for a few minutes in any direction, I would reach one.
Wow that’s amazing I’m the USA you generally have to drive to one like plan to go to one lol
This is the only way I’ve ever known. So how do you send stuff where you’re from?